Even if the daycare centre was pre-E4 where are you going to get a breed parent with Aqua Jet on it? Of the Water type within the game around five/six of them learn the move and are within Marril's egg group: Golduck, Oshawott family, Beartic* family, Seel family, Buizel family. Most comes rather late in the game and those that don't are just better than Marill in the long run. If you say I trade in a breed parent/bred Marill with Aqua Jet into your game then at that point you have to ask "Why bother breeding Marill when I could have bred a better [Xtype] Pokemon instead?". Marill family as a whole has a slow beginning, an okay middle, but starts dragging badly in the end.

Edit: Late rely I know, just wanted to express my feeling on the subject.

1. catch random earlygame pokemon like azurill/riolu/magnemite onto some other game
2. train it to lv100
3. trade it back

there done

On the topic of Mareep though, it does have some potential considering it has immediate Thunder Wave and Static hax. It also gains some coverage moves by level too (Power Gem and Signal Beam), while Magnemite has to get them tutored. It's not as good as Magnemite, but it's a great Pokemon on its own.

Anyone else playing Challenge Mode? I'm doing a blind Nuzlocke of it, which has had a few scares.

From what I've seen so far:

Riolu
High TierGoddamn, was I lucky to get a Rash Riolu. But anyway, even though earlygame, it really struggles in terms of damage output, it can manage decently with Counter, and once you get Work Up and Return and Force Palm it's dealing good damage all around. I'm still not into the middle of the game, but it's been really amazing so far.

VenipedeToo slow to grind, but Leftovers Whirlipede is amazingly bulky and I'm actually really finding a use for it on my team.

ServineExactly the same as in BW1, though it feels like the game facilitates it a bit more. And I don't mind me some Growth abuse, either.

Here's a version-specific one, and one that you poor saps with White 2 are missing out on. I may be biased since Mandibuzz is one of my favourite Pokemon of all time, but I was willing to bend time for this chick and things worked out perfectly.

Mandibuzz has some seriously amazing bulk, it was taking super-effective hits and not even being 2HKO'd! Initially I used it as a Fly slave but when it got Nasty Plot, Dark Pulse and Air Slash I couldn't turn that down, especially not with the bulk to get off at least one guaranteed, if not two. Even though the special side is Mandibuzz's weaker attack-wise, after a couple of boosts not a lot can stop it.

Matchups against Gyms aren't usually kind, Elesa outright wins, Clay's stuff all has Rock Slide, there's no way Mandibuzz can beat Skarm one-on-one, Drayden is generally evil and Marlon I suppose is neutral. At least you can take down 3 of the Elite 4 with relative ease (and a bit of help from Weak Armor in my case).

Weak Armor may seem like the worst ability for it considering the defensive role it plays but it actually really helped. Sacrificing a bit of defense for Speed, especially after its special attack has been powered up, helped me power through both Marshal and Shauntal (I got lucky with the latter due to Drifblim deciding to use Acrobatics over any of its other moves...).

Leaning towards Top Tier here, walls don't usually do too well in-game but this one sure as hell does. Just make sure you're around Route 4 on Thursday or willing to change the clock.

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Definitely disagreeing with Top Tier for Mandibuzz. As you said yourself, it matches up terribly with most of the gym leaders it's available for, which is one of the most important things to be able to do for a top tier Pokemon. Plus, it gets Air Slash and Dark Pulse at 41 and 46 respectively, meaning it spends 16 levels being very meh and not very useful only to have waste turns to set up in order to use its terrible Sp. Attack . Mine has missed kills often at +4 and sometimes even at +6. I'd say Mid Tier at the most since it's pretty bulky and can afford to take a few turns to set up, but it does too little damage and is not very useful for most of the game for it to be Top.

In addition to Volcarona and Scrafty, dumping impressions for the rest of the team in my first run (doing a Challenge Mode run now in B2 with a completely different team):

Oshawott
Location: Starter
+ Water options really limited compared to Grass and especially Fire
+ Decent variety on offense (Fighting moves, Megahorn for a Heart Scale once you have Samurott and obligatory Ice)
- Need to keep both a physical and special Water move around for a while (Razor Shell has PP issues for an early-game move)
+ Gym performance; Only struggles against Burgh (two Grass types) and of course Elesa, walls Skyla's Swanna and pretty much anything the freaky fish guy throws at you
+ Ice Beam pre-Elite? Yes plz.High

Sewaddle
Location: Route 20
+ Learns Bug Bite early and picks up Razor Leaf shortly after to get offense off to a good start
- Happiness evolution, though you get it early enough now that you should hit 220 around L22 or so
+ Leavanny is really fast for a Grass-type and has good coverage with Return (which will be in the 90-102 range most of the time on a happy-evolver) and Shadow Claw
- Lots of weaknesses, including Poison (lol) and Rock which comes up surprisingly often
+ Better-than-average Gym performance (loses to Poison/Flying/Elesa thanks to Emolga and that damn Zebstrika, but beats Burgh/most of Clay/fish guy)Mid

Sandile
Location: Route 4 (prior to 3rd badge)
+ Largely the same as in BW1, except easier to get one that still has Bite (L14/L15 have it) - Gym weaknesses the same literally since the Ice gym got replaced by a Water
+ Still has Moxie or Intimidate, both of which rock for different reasons (and easy to tell which is which)
- Pretty common weaknesses
+ Pounds the stuffing out of most of the Plasma grunts and can even pound some of the Cryogonal-packing sages if you get a good Speed drawHigh

Joltik
Location: Chargestone Cave (after badge 5)
+ On average, requires less babying than it did in BW1 (comes at a higher level and the levels in a regular playthrough I found to be slightly lower)
+ Still has 91% Thunder and gets it around the same point, plus has access to Signal Beam without tutors
+ Now has two gyms it can make its proverbial daddy (Flying and Water)
- Bug-type still giving a Rock and Fire weak, the former being a big problem
+ 108 Speed+T-Wave (either by Heart Scale or TM) makes a great crippler since there's no Electric-immune legendsHigh

Current team for testing: Tepig, Azurill, Magnemite, Drilbur, Dwebble and Sigilyph

I have used a pure gen I team throughout the game (excluding HM slaves), their moveset and rating is as follows:

Lapras
-Village bridge
I have spent an hour or more to catch this...(5% chance on rippling water) and it has launched perish song which almost forced me to use the master ball (I caught it in the second turn with a net ball)
Despite all the difficulties at the start, it really did pay off later on in the game. Its IceBream / Surf / Psychic means that it's a beast in the cave and can easily beat Iris and the fighting dude of elite 4. It's also my HM slave in water.
It also has impressive bulk which is very helpful. I need to switch a lot in battles as I couldn't tell which poke is which by the jap name.

I would rate it as mid-high. Main drawback is lack of speed and typing.

Jolteon
-Castelia park
Eevee is slightly easier to catch than Lapras and available relatively early in the game. I didn't evolve it until it learns baton pass so it is more or less useless until that point.
After evolving to Jolteon, its immense speed and SpA makes it a great sweeper. However, its movepool is quite swallow and the only "coverage" move it had was Shadow-ball. I have run TWave / Bolt / ChargeBeam / ShadowBall. It's fairly useful for any flying or water creatures and the shadowball is super effective with 2 elite 4s.
The main drawback is its frailty which gets it killed a lots of time against wild poke when i attempted to catch them.

Again I would rate it as mid-high.

Arcanine-some power plant near roxie's gym
I had a Growlithe early in the game and did not evolve it until it learns outrage. This effort did not pay off though as I found it not as powerful as Lapra's IceBeam. Somehow my arcanine is lack of firepower. Even the nature is +atk, its flamewheel always fail to kill some super effective targets. And when it is using flare blitz, its survivability suffers. Extremespeed isn't that useful as well, it always fail to 2HKO somehow and lack of PP is very frustrating.

I would rate it as mid

Sandslash
-relic castle
If I was not bound to gen I poke, I wouldn't have pick it. If marowak / dugtrio is available, I wouldn't have pick it either. Nevertheless, it can learn earthquake (or magnitude in the earlier game). It is also an infinite escape rope due to Dig. My biggest complain is that why StoneEdge is not available before elite4? It is forced to use RockTomb and it has very low accuracy and power.

I have not used it at all during elite4 and champion. I would rate Sandslash as low-mid. Main drawback is lack of stone-edge, and low speed and relatively frail.

Raticate
-sewer
Last but not least, raticate is my big surprise in game, not because it's top percentage of rattata but it's surprisingly powerful facade.
I did not catch it until I completed champion road and need my 5th poke. I have run the set with sucker punch / quick attack / facade / filler. Facade is extremely powerful. For instance, my lv. 58 raticate can give about 80% damage to iris' haxorus, which means a 2HKO when I used suckerpunch in the second turn.
However, it is in general not advisable to use the toxic orb before those main battle otherwise a lot of investment is required on potions. No matter what, I would rate Raticate as mid.

Availability is a huge factor in these rankings. The sheer amount of luck and time required to capture Lapras prevents it from being anywhere near mid-high in my opinion. I'm also not sure about your ranking for Jolteon. While it is easier to get than Lapras, you are still stuck with Thunder Fang/Pin Missile/Thunder Wave until right before Skyla's gym, if not immediately after. It has a completely terrible moveset for at least a third of the game.

Availability is a huge factor in these rankings. The sheer amount of luck and time required to capture Lapras prevents it from being anywhere near mid-high in my opinion. I'm also not sure about your ranking for Jolteon. While it is easier to get than Lapras, you are still stuck with Thunder Fang/Pin Missile/Thunder Wave until right before Skyla's gym, if not immediately after. It has a completely terrible moveset for at least a third of the game.

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In fact I don't think I have evolved it at all until level mid-30s hence I might have omitted what you have observed. I would say my rating is rather late-game inclined as my early game struggle was already long time ago.

If I need to factor availability in, Lapras would need to be relegated for sure; I wanted to give up and go for staryu several times.

Sandslash
-relic castle
If I was not bound to gen I poke, I wouldn't have pick it. If marowak / dugtrio is available, I wouldn't have pick it either. Nevertheless, it can learn earthquake (or magnitude in the earlier game). It is also an infinite escape rope due to Dig. My biggest complain is that why StoneEdge is not available before elite4? It is forced to use RockTomb and it has very low accuracy and power.

I have not used it at all during elite4 and champion. I would rate Sandslash as low-mid. Main drawback is lack of stone-edge, and low speed and relatively frail.

I'm also not sure about your ranking for Jolteon. While it is easier to get than Lapras, you are still stuck with Thunder Fang/Pin Missile/Thunder Wave until right before Skyla's gym, if not immediately after. It has a completely terrible moveset for at least a third of the game.

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You can get Volt Switch, which will hold you off until Charge Beam and, later, Discharge. Mid seems fine from an observer's standpoint.

I'm going to run through the game again. Anybody willing to suggest some obscure mons?

Regarding Flare Blitz, you have to note that this is in-game and you are allowed (pretty much encouraged to) spam potions. The fact is you'll be swimming in money anyway so the recoil damage is not really a big deal, and Flare Blitz scores pretty much sure KO vs anything weak to it, and even some that resist it. At least that was the case when I was playing.

Has anyone tried to use Zubat? They are available early in-game, and are excellent for the 3rd gym, being x4 resistant to bug and grass, while learning Wing Attack right off the bat (pwn intended).
Once it evolves into Crobat, it outspeeds everyone and has access to Acrobatics at Level 33. Also, they are one of the few flying types available throughout the game, and can be used as HM Fly slave.

I did try Zubat for a while. Zubat doesn't really destroy Burgh though (because Dwebble is the biggest piece of fuck to exist) and he's not exactly very useful against Elesa for obvious reasons. Zubat's just... not useful. He's not bad, but he's not good either.

@nwokohk: You mentioned Facade Raticate. You mentioned Toxic Orb. IIRC that thing not available in game and requires 16 BP to purchase. Honestly, no. Unless you are willing to spend 2 hours grinding in PWT/Battle Subway for that. >.>also lol lv58 raticate dealing 80% to haxorus, that thing's only lv59 taking a 140 stab BP attack what are you smoking

Is there a decent walkthrough out there that would help us with this? As in, with TM locations (serebii doesn't count because it just says the TM is in the cave and doesn't mention you need, say, HM Waterfall to get it.), pokemon locations and such?

Is there a decent walkthrough out there that would help us with this? As in, with TM locations (serebii doesn't count because it just says the TM is in the cave and doesn't mention you need, say, HM Waterfall to get it.), pokemon locations and such?

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Repels and hm slaves exist for a reason. It's not hard to walk through an entire route/cave with the new repel feature.

Repels and hm slaves exist for a reason. It's not hard to walk through an entire route/cave with the new repel feature.

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By needing an HM, I guess I wasn't clear. I meant needing an HM that you don't have access to at the moment. Like serebii will tell you that, for example, in R/S there is a TM for Dragon Claw in Meteor Falls, but it doesn't mention that you need HM Waterfall to get it.
You can search forever in Meteor Falls, but until you have that 8th badge you can't get the TM, and by then your pokemon are at high levels, making it less useful. That stuff obv. gets accounted for on in-game lists.